WHEREFORE the 28th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle was convened on February 16, 2006, with the customary formalities...

ALL RISE!

Hear ye, hear ye! This court is now in session, the Reasonable Judge Eh Nonymous presiding. All ye who have business before this Skeptical court, draw near.

Good day to you, counselors. Let me remind everyone that this is not a general subject matter political/social/legal blogfests, where any issue whatsoever is ripe for decision. Appropriate topics are those issues where testable data can produce reasoned conclusions.

Let us have a moment of respect, if we can, for the Amazing Randi, who at last word was recovering from surgery after a bypass operation.

We have some fascinating topics on today’s schedule, including holistic treatments for dogs, a submission on dowsing, and a great many posts relating to the War On Vaccination. And let me note, while this Court is necessarily neutral in the conflict over Church & State, those who appear before it are not required to be, and generally feel that where religion seeks the privileged status of overruling scientific proof in matters of objective fact, it is out of order.

Nicely done.

Next up is The Huge Entity on March 2, and it's never too early to get those entries in. The schedule for upcoming Skeptics' Circles, along with submission guidelines, can be found here. As always, I'd like to put out a call for voluteers to host future editions of the Circle. If you're interested and think you've got what it takes, drop me a line at oracknows@gmail.com, and I'll find you a place on the schedule.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

As hard as it is to believe, two weeks have already flown by, and it's time for the Twenty-seventh Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. This is a particularly propitious time, as it's the very first Skeptics' Circle of its second year of existence. Not only that, this edition of the Circle marks the point where I have been its organizer longer than its founder, St. Nate.

I can think of few bloggers as capable of handling such an important Skeptics' Circle as our present host, Prometheus. His blog, A Photon in the Darkness, has been a bastion of rational thought in the all-too-often irrational blogosphere since it first appeared in June, and, as expected, he's delivered, this time in the form of a ripping war story--and I do mean war story--about the fight against pseudoscience and quackery:

"Our enemy is aggressive, committed and utterly ruthless – they will not hesitate to use any tactic that they think will aid them. They are not bound by the Rules of Science as we are, and they use that to their advantage. However, they are fighting on the side of ignorance and superstition, and so they will ultimately fail. Our job is to hasten that defeat and to minimize civilian casualties and suffering. The general population may not always understand that we are fighting for them, but we must never forget that."